6 Beliefs Destroy Emotional Regulation (Do You Have Them?)

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]This is so important to understand because if you view your emotions as a threat or as something that should be avoided or suppressed, you're activating your ancient brain, your amygdala.

[00:00:13]You're setting off your internal alarm bells, which is going to make everything worse. And research has proven that this exacerbates your emotional dysregulation. So there are six categories of beliefs that have been identified. Which one is yours?

[00:00:33]Number one is that you feel that your emotions are overwhelming and uncontrollable. They feel like there's something that just happened to you and you can do almost nothing about it.

[00:00:43]There's a feeling that if you go there, the feeling is bigger than you. You might never get out of it. You won't be able to function. So this belief is one of the biggest drivers of emotional avoidance. And avoidance actually makes things worse, not better. And yes, I will provide some tips at the end of the video to help guide you with how to deal with this, as well as where to find more information on why avoidance is such a problem. But basically, avoidance keeps emotional distress going rather than letting it resolve. Number two is that you feel that your emotions are shameful and irrational. So instead of simply feeling anxious, not simply, but instead of feeling anxious or angry or sad, you layer on top of that that there's something wrong with you for feeling that way. You feel bad about feeling anxious or sad or angry. Your inner critic stays right there criticizing the emotion you're feeling. So feeling shame about your emotions prolongs them. It prevents people from seeking help on issues or even sharing what they're feeling because they're ashamed of those feelings. So if you've listened to some of my other videos, you'll hear me say that there's nothing wrong with their emotion with our emotions. They don't know feel good. We don't like them. But we're human and we have all sorts of emotions. what those emotions cause us to do or the actions that we take from emotions can be judged more easily. But the core emotion that's information for you. It's not something about being bad or good. Number three is the feeling that your emotions are invalid or meaningless. So, you dismiss your own feelings before anybody else even has a chance to. This is stupid. I shouldn't feel this, you said yourself. or I shouldn't be complaining. Other people have much bigger problems. This is not a big deal. So, this can feel to you like perspective or being rational. But really, what you're doing is invalidating your own emotions instead of investigating, okay, what is valid about this emotion? What is this emotion trying to tell me? Why am I feeling this? and approaching that with curiosity rather than some automatic feeling that there's something wrong with you for feeling this. So at its core, this is suppression. This is suppressing the emotions, invalidating them, dismissing them. And that tends to make emotions worse or they eek out in other ways. And I'm anticipating your question. Yes, you can have more than one of these beliefs. Maybe identify what your top two are. If you have a lot of them, identify your top two. And then we're going to talk about identifying the core negative belief under them in a minute. And these categories, by the way, come from a scientific research.

[00:03:47]I'll put a citation here. We call it Maner at all. Maner was the lead researcher. But these are the categories of beliefs about emotions that have been shown to make our emotional distress worse, more intense, and then also prolong the amount of time that we're feeling that negative emotion. So without these beliefs, those emotions can resolve quicker, not be as intense, and not last as long. That sounds good, right? Okay, let's talk about number four. Belief number four, you feel like your emotions are useless. What good do they do? They're basically like interference and they get in the way of clear thinking. And I should say clear thinking because actually our clearest thinking incorporates an understanding of our emotions, an understanding of how we feel about different situations, events, people. Our emotions are actually a really rich source of information when we learn to work with them instead of like go away. So when you push them away, you're actually pushing away a really useful pile of information that's helpful for you in understanding yourself, understanding others, and navigating the world. pushing them away disconnects you from one of the most important parts of information that help you understand what matters to you, what your boundaries are, and what needs attention in your life. So, this can be really common among people who've had to be really high functioners for a long time, probably since you were very little. And it might feel like, well, this really helps me function. And sure it might, but it might also help you develop a lot of anxiety, not sleep well, run yourself into the ground, maybe hit burnout one day, and overall probably not contributing contributing to your happiness. And I do also have a video on how suppressing our emotions is actually a type of emotional dysregulation, even if we don't feel it is, it is a disregulation. Number five, the fifth one is that your emotions are damaging to you or to others. Somehow a belief that they're really dangerous.

[00:06:25]So, this connects to that feeling that they're overwhelming because if you feel overwhelmed by something, it is in essence dangerous. But it also might be even a stronger threat. It might feel like if I let myself feel this anger and express it, I'll do major damage.

[00:06:46]Or it could be my anxiety is hurting me.

[00:06:50]It's creating health problems. and then reacting to the anxiety that you're feeling with panic which makes things worse. So this belief is treating the emotion as if it's a threat. You're being attacked by something internal and this makes us feel like we have to run away from the emotion, go into freeze mode so we don't feel that emotion or fight against that emotion. And we have to do all of those things with urgency.

[00:07:20]damaging threats make us we if it's a real damaging threat we should deal with it with urgency right but so it's taking that kind of attitude towards the emotion so before I go to number six where did these beliefs develop my guess is you're already thinking about the examples of where you got these beliefs but it's probably something you were taught very young it could be that you saw a parent exploding in anger all the time and you saw how damaging that was.

[00:07:52]So you don't let yourself feel the anger, but what was actually damaging to you was that adult's behavior, not the feeling. So you can feel anger without having it lead to destructive behavior.

[00:08:10]Obviously for people who feel that their beliefs are shameful, they were probably taught that as a very young child. How could you feel that way? Only bad people feel that. We're not supposed to feel jealousy, envy, anger, any of those, right? But none of that taught you how to work with that emotion. And all of that helped you to develop, if not caused you to develop a negative core belief. So, if you haven't already downloaded my free PDF, transform your negative core belief, I'll show it here, link in the description, and I think it can be super helpful in identifying what the negative core belief is under this belief you have about emotions or your ability to handle them. And it also gives you some methods for beginning to overturn that very deep core belief.

[00:09:10]Number six is that you feel your emotions are contagious. You're always monitoring how much you're letting other people see of what you're really feeling because you're worried it's going to destabilize them. You're worried they'll pick up on the emotions and not be able to handle them. So, in this way, your emotions also feel dangerous. Not so much that it's going to immediately directly cause danger to you, but that other people will catch them and that might be dangerous. You might feel that your emotions are too much for other people or maybe other people have more to deal with than you do. So, you suppress suppress suppress your own. And when you're doing this, you're not only suppressing your emotions. This is actually a form of almost self- eraser.

[00:10:00]you're erasing who you are for others, but also and more importantly for yourself. So, I'm not saying that it's safe to express your emotions in front of everybody. There might be some people who get very destabilized, but that's because of their own emotional habits.

[00:10:19]It's not because of you. And there's also settings in which it's not appropriate to share all your feelings.

[00:10:25]Work, for example. If you relate to this, know that it's not that your emotions are contagious and allow yourself to feel them and validate them and not put them down as being, you know, overblown or not as important as other people's. We don't have to share everything we're feeling and we don't have to let other people know everything we're feeling, but we can still know we're feeling it and validate it. So this belief is not discussed a lot and a lot of people hold it without even being consciously aware that they have it. So if that's you, do what you can to bring this to the forefront of your mind. So Manser's research shows that all six of these beliefs, the more somebody feels them, the greater their emotional dysregulation and the greater their emotional distress. And then separate research shows that the beliefs that tie to a feeling of I can't cope with this emotion which would tie to like the damaging that they're damaging or that they're overwhelming but also could connect to others but that feeling of I can't cope with them that that is like the number one for emotional dysregulation. And I talk about that a little bit more in the video I released I think last week. I'll link that here.

[00:11:48]And that video also gives you really clear tools to working with this. But okay, if you have identified which of these beliefs are yours, what do you do about it? You have those beliefs. Well, number one is to recognize that beliefs change. I'm sure you have a lot of examples in your life about things that you've believed where over time there was more evidence changed the belief.

[00:12:12]This happens in all sorts of formats. So beliefs can change. Number two, keep in mind confirmation bias. When we believe something, we look primarily for the evidence that confirms it, not the evidence that denies it. So in challenging these beliefs, begin to reverse it. Begin to look at what evidence shows you that that belief isn't true. Number three is to take those say one or two top beliefs that you have and drill into it using that PDF I mentioned about negative core beliefs. You can look at the list of the negative core beliefs. So what do these beliefs say about you? They might say I'm damaged. I'm a bad person. I'm defective. I'm incapable. I'm in danger.

[00:13:04]Those are some of the core beliefs that have been developed for use in EMDR therapy for example which is very effective therapy method. But take your belief about emotion and drill into it to find those negative core beliefs and then you can begin to work on those which will filter through everything else. And then steps I talked about in that other video I referenced are about creating distance from your thoughts.

[00:13:33]So, I'm thinking that I can't cope with this feeling or I'm thinking that I'm a bad person and it's shameful to have this emotion. So, it just helps you create a little bit of distance. So, you can have your emotion. You have your thought about that emotion, which often feels like inshed, but then you can have the thought about the thought and begin to pull it all apart. And then the last piece is, and this is hard, not saying it's easy in any way, learning to sit with your emotions, developing your emotional intelligence, your ability to read what that emotion is telling you. All right, this work takes time, effort, but is really worth it. Let me know what you think of this video. Comment below. Any questions? I'm going to post a little quiz here if I can. It's a new feature on YouTube. So, you can tell me which of these is your primary belief. And if you found value, please do hit the like button, subscribe, and share with someone who might benefit. Thank you so much, and I'll see you next week.